13,000 Lines Of Chat In Portal 2

Share this:

Here is a news journalism dilemma: the main fact to be gleaned from this story is that there are 13,000 lines of dialogue in Valve’s impending physics-abuse sequel Portal 2. If I put that vital statistic in the headline of this story, a bunch of people are very likely to come and read the piece. But then they’ll discover there aren’t really any other facts to be had from this story, and may feel let down or openly angry.

If I don’t put that vital statistic in the headline, I probably can’t come up with an equivalently effective alternative. “Portal 2 has lots of dialogue?” “Portal 2: Clearly Quite Chatty?” At least, though, readers would be rewarded with information they couldn’t glean purely from the headline. Whatever’s a boy to do?
Um. Well, guess I answered that one already.

I can also tell you that the game has jazz in it. How about that? This according to Charles Onyett of IGN (who I’ve met, and is a nice man) in this preview of the first 30 minutes of the game. Other than that, it seems as though Valve may well have played all the pre-release hype cards they’re going to – we know it’s a long game, we know there are more robo-personalities, we know Aperture’s labs have been invaded by the great outdoors and we know GlaDOS is making a comeback. How that all fits together, and what manner of sprawling story those 13,000 lines of dialogue are going to tell us, we just don’t know.

Which, let’s be honest, is half the appeal. It’s a sequel, it’s based around the same core mechanic – but it’s also very much a mystery. I do like mysteries. They’re so… mysterious.

Here’s a video clip associated with that preview, by the way, which I think has a smattering of new footage in it.

Wow, that video reminds me so much of Quake 3 Defrag, it’s not even funny. There’s your rest of the story right there.
Especially the wall jumping and the bouncing around trough the air in impossible levels, shooting things.

Considering that ME2 is an shooter / RPG hybrid with a tonne of character interaction and dozens of major NPC’s, and is a much longer game than Portal 2’s going to be, 13,000 lines of dialogue sounds ridiculously huge.

You could at least have compared it to how many lines of dialogue other games have. For instance that’s probably about 0.5 Fallout: New Vegas’s and 13,000 Peggles of dialogue (I think Peggle must have one line of dialogue?).

Reading the preview, it’s “smooth jazz” with soloing sax… So it sounds like it’s probably perfectly in line with the kind of goofey loungey stuff playing on the radios in Portal 1. I’d say used more comically than musically\atmospherically.

Your point? Oh right, it was by Obsidian, my bad! As if that makes the game tremendously superior to any of Bethesda’s offerings… Frankly, it was no bloody different. Generic dialogue, hideously slow beginnings, uninspired acting. Again.

@DoucheMullet

Have you heard Mike Patton’s “Mondo Cane”? I’m no fan of Bungle or Faith No More, but bloody hell Patton was on fire all through Mondo Cane. Excellent stuff.

And metal is okay when it isn’t… metal. So, The Fucking Champs, preferably. Or Naked City.

Both Diablo Swing Orchestra and Mr. Bungle are more commonly classified as “Avantgarde Metal”. However, I’m sure DSO would be cool with swing metal too. You want proper jazz metal? Why don’t you try Ephel Duath: link to youtube.com

Or, somewhat more gimmicky and amusing, Ihsahn’s latest album, After, which has a lot of free jazz sax. On top of black metal. Yes, really: link to youtube.com

(Ihsahn are commonly referred to as avantgarde black metal, and by commonly I mean “probably 2 or 3 times”. I’m still trying to make “post black metal” happen, but since my WP article got deleted, it’s been an uphill struggle)

“Jazz” doesn’t have to be anachronistic – it isn’t just dixieland, bebop and Kenny G – plenty of stuff is very modern/furturistic, blends into electronica, classical, folk / world music and psychedelic rock and if it wasn’t labelled as “jazz” you might not think it was.